Papillon
by Lex Munro
Summary: The Forger arc of Waiting for the Kick, incl. prequel parts. Sean Eames has many names, but that doesn't make it any easier to give one up. Eames/Arthur starting one-sided. Warnings: shades, violence, language, OC, movie spoilers, canon character death.
1. Rebirth Through Refusal

Eames' arc of **Wait for the Kick**. as a result, some of the timeline overlaps. the name "Papillon" comes from the song by the Editors.

prequel. this was actually two or three tidbits that refused to be properly sewn together into a real fic.

**warnings:** pre-movie (slightly AU?). taking liberties with character backstory. two fairly blatant crossovers. language: pg (for bastard).

**pairing:** none/gen (well, implied Ivan/Victoria).

**timeline:** starts a long time pre-movie. Eames is about five-ish at the beginning.

**disclaimer:** Chris Nolan owns Inception and its characters.

**notes:** 1) the word little Nicholas is looking for is protege. 2) how do you become the world's greatest forger? learn to lie from the world's foremost expert on lying. 3) i'm using the actors' real ages as a frame of reference. Lightman's probably in his late twenties here, and probably had a raging crush on Victoria at some point (because i can't imagine she'd give in to his womanizing ways). 4) "getting on" in this case means "doing all right." 5) Eton is a prestigious boys' secondary school in Windsor (near London). 6) by "the Minister," Victoria probably means the British Minister of Intelligence. 7) "holidays" = "vacation." 8) "tut" is a curious and wonderful little interjection rarely used in American English; it expresses (in this case) disdain. 9) to the best of my knowledge (i'm admittedly a bit behind on my Lie to Me), Emily has never actually been held hostage in this way.

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><p><strong>Rebirth Through Refusal<strong>

Nicholas Winslow has decided he Does Not Like London. They've only been in the city for two days, and he hates nearly everything about it. It's cold, it's gloomy, the air is disgusting, the food is absurd, the people dress funny…

"I want to go back to Cairo," he tells his mother, just as he did when they arrived the day before. Today, Uncle Cal is with them, and Nicholas hopes that Uncle Cal will agree that Nicholas should be kept someplace warm and comparatively clean. (Uncle Cal is not actually Nicholas' Uncle, not _really_, just one of his mother's closer colleagues; like an apprentice, but there's a better word for it that Nicholas can't remember just now.)

Disappointingly, Uncle Cal raises his eyebrows and keeps quiet.

"We are not going back to Cairo," Nicholas' mother says firmly. "Mummy's arranged to get you a stepfather so you can stay here."

He puffs out his cheeks. "I don't want a stepfather."

"Well, you must have one all the same."

"But why?" he whines. "Why must I have a stepfather?"

Sighing, she purses her lips and looks at him. "Because, darling, Mummy can't keep dragging you around the world. It's high time you got to school, and you'll have to stay in one place for that, so you'll need a stepfather to look after you."

"You said Uncle Cal was planning to settle down in London," Nicholas argues. "Why can't he be my stepfather?"

Uncle Cal laughs. "Out the mouths of babes, my dear."

"Because Uncle Cal is an impertinent scoundrel, and far too young besides," Nicholas' mother says ruthlessly. "I fear he's already had a dreadful influence over you."

"He _is_ one of the best little liars I've ever met," Uncle Cal admits.

Nicholas' mother gives Uncle Cal a sharp look. "One day, Cal, I hope you have a child of your own so that you can see what an unfortunate impact you have on the upbringing process."

Uncle Cal just grins cheekily.

Nicholas' mother snorts and turns back to Nicholas. "Mister Wright will manage your accounts, and Uncle Cal shall pop in from time to time to make sure you're getting on. It won't be so bad, love—once you're old enough for Eton, you'll hardly ever see the man."

"It's not the stepfather, it's _London_," Nicholas announces, and folds his arms over his chest in a deep sulk. "It's cold and wet and dirty and the food is yuk and I _don't like it_."

"Don't be silly, London's marvellous," says Uncle Cal. "Hey—Sherlock Holmes loved it so much he hardly ever left. Knew the place back-to-front."

Nicholas is slightly sceptical of the validity of this argument. Sherlock Holmes was a drug addict, after all, and fictional; his opinion, while educated, can still be considered quite unreasonable.

"Look, precious," sighs Nicholas' mother. "You're stuck with it. The only way to have less of your stepfather and London in your life is to spend a rather distressing amount of time around religion, I'm afraid."

"Why can't I go and live with my real father?" Nicholas wants to know.

His mother's face goes quite expressionless. "Because I shot your real father. Three times. In the chest." She gives a businesslike little sniff. "And you wouldn't like it where he's from; it's much colder there."

"Where's that?"

"Russia," Uncle Cal answers. He's looking at Nicholas' mother with a queer sort of watchful smile, like he's searching for something. Nicholas isn't worried; he knows Uncle Cal wouldn't hurt his mother.

"Oh," Nicholas says. "Well, when I'm done with school, _then_ can we go back to Africa?"

"Much sooner than that, my duckling," his mother assures him, and rubs his back. "I shall make sure that the Minister lets us go on our holidays every year, nice and proper. And then we can go to Cairo, or Nairobi, or Cape Town, or wherever you like. I hear Southeast Asia is nice, except during monsoon season."

"All right," Nicholas concedes, mollified.

"You'll like school, too," Uncle Cal tells him with a nudge at his shoulder. "Just pay attention to what other kids seem to like and find a way to pretend that you like that stuff, too. Won't do to get perfect marks, either. Find something to pretend you're quite bad at. Then you'll be popular in no time, and you can get away with anything you like."

"You are _horrible_, Cal," Nicholas' mother says. "I hope you have a daughter, and I hope someone tells her how to be a smouldering temptress."

"Tut, Vicky."

In fifteen years, when Uncle Cal has retired and gone to work in America, Nicholas will find that he's unwittingly followed in his mother's footsteps. Then the Minister of Intelligence will ask him in person to find and kill a 'rogue agent.' Only years of practice with masks will let him hide his shock at seeing his mother's photograph.

There will be no use in asking 'what's she done,' because the phrase 'rogue agent' says it all. He doesn't believe for a moment that she would betray Queen and Country. Perhaps she was given an order she refused follow, or perhaps she was simply tired of the kind of work they do. The academic side is one thing, but the killing side…they don't let you out of that easily. The Minister will say that he doesn't expect even Nicholas will be able to find her, talented and promising as he is—they're just putting all their best men on watch, that's all.

Nicholas won't bother to look for her.

And six years after that, when he's tracked down a bastard of a Serbian to Washington, D.C., he'll get the order to wait. Wait, even though the man has schoolchildren for hostages. One of those little children will be a girl called Emily. It will be the order Nicholas refuses to follow. He'll slip in, kill the target and every last one of his men, and carry little Emily to her father.

Uncle Cal will nod gratefully.

Nicholas Wright will vanish somewhere over the Atlantic, and Sean Eames will step off a plane in France, nervous and paranoid and inches from shooting anyone who looks at him too long.

**.End.**


	2. Miss Miles

prequel. because i like the idea of Mal and Eames being school friends.

**warnings:** pre-movie (slightly AU?). taking liberties with when/how the characters met and how long they've known each other. language: pg (for bloody).

**pairing:** none/gen (background Mal/Dom at the end).

**timeline:** oh, jeez...um...maybe ten years pre-movie? a little less?

**disclaimer:** Chris Nolan owns Inception and its characters.

**notes:** 1) another one of the foundational fears: leaving everything you know. even for someone who's usually strong-minded and independent, leaving behind everything and everyone is disarming and disorienting. 2) i apologize for the rustiness of my French; small glossary after the notes. Eames, by the way, completely bungles his attempt to say "i don't speak French." it's "je (ne) parle pas français." 3) Eton is a very prestigious boys' secondary (ages 13-18) school in England. it's pretty expensive, unless you get in on an academic or music scholarship. 4) i'm always a little surprised by how much Americans use given names. in much of the rest of the world (including England) you're more likely to call your schoolmates (or coworkers) by their surnames. 5) "smashed" is british for "drunk." see also "pissed" or "sloshed." 6) "torch" is british for "flashlight." 7) Mal the fangirl. you're welcome.

**French mini-glossary:** "Perdu?" = "Lost?" (informal) "Vachement beau garçon." = "Bloody handsome boy." (informal) "Ça en valait la colère de Papa." = "It was worth Papa's anger." (informal) "je sais pas où" = "I-don't-know-where"

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><p><strong>Miss Miles<strong>

Picture an old, well-respected university, an art school, in Paris. Picture a building full of long halls and stepped classrooms and squared stairwells bathed in sunlight. Picture a young man, the right age to be giving school another go, perhaps after a brief stint in some country's military.

He looks very anxious and out of his depth.

He's lost, mostly because he can't speak a single blessed word of French, and he's trying very hard to locate his first class.

And a girl approaches him, as girls are wont to do (he draws them like flies to honey, no matter what he does, and he wishes like hell it would work on men instead).

"Perdu?" she says, with bright, curious eyes.

For a fleeting moment, he's tired and terrified and incredibly homesick. But he can't go home. He can never go home again. "I'm so sorry," he sighs, rubbing at his right eye. "Je ne…parlez…ah, I don't speak French."

She laughs. She has a beautiful laugh. "That's okay," she assures him. "A lot of the students here don't. Are you lost?"

"Oh, thank God. Yes. I'm—I am so, _so_ lost," he tells her, and feels shamefully close to tears. "I'm trying to get to classical architecture, with Miles."

There's a mischievous sort of twinkle in her eyes, and she takes his hand. "I'm going that way. Come on, we're late."

They duck into a classroom while the grey-haired professor is checking attendance. The man's as English as can be, from his spectacles to his shabby cardigan to his ringing Cockney voice, and somehow the homesickness isn't so bad anymore.

The pretty girl tugs the lost young man into the fifth row, wrangles him into the seat next to hers.

The professor eyes them over his spectacles as he finishes the list. "Mister Eames, is it?" he says.

"Yes, sir," the young man answers on Eton-trained auto-pilot. "Sorry, sir."

"Nevermind. It can be a bit overwhelming, the first day. Miss Miles, on the other hand, was clearly dawdling about the corridors."

Eames eyes the pretty girl, who is making no attempt to hide her grin. "I was making sure nobody was lost," she says. "If I'd been here any sooner, poor Eames would still be out there."

The professor conveys his opinion of that story with a disdainful sniff and sets about starting the lesson.

"It's all right," the girl whispers. "Papa only pretends to be strict. I'm Mallorie Miles. What's your name?"

A name hovers on his tongue…a name he has to unlearn now. "Sean Eames," he says instead.

"Vachement beau garçon," she mumbles, and shakes his hand. "Ça en valait la colère de Papa."

"Yeah," he says. "Haven't learnt French in the past five minutes. What'd you say?"

Miles giggles softly behind her hand. "Ask me again someday."

He never remembers to ask her again, but her words will be crystal clear in dreams, and he'll keep thinking to himself that he should ask someone.

Miles is his first friend as Sean Eames, and she latches on fiercely.

She won't let him sequester himself in his cramped little room at the student hostel. She shows him where to go to shop for groceries; where to go for good, cheap food; where to go to get drunk around people who will understand him when he slurs out his home address because he's so falling-down smashed that he needs to be trundled off in a wheelbarrow. She makes him join clubs with her, takes him to see famous buildings, famous statues, famous bridges. She introduces him to her family (her mother, Marie, instantly adores him), and after the term ends she invites him (kidnaps him, really) for Christmas.

A week into Eames' second term, they're staring up at Notre Dame's rose window.

"What are you running from, Eames?" she asks him.

He glances at her, but she's still watching dust motes dancing through the beams of colored light. "Nothing at the moment, Miles," he replies.

"Oh, you're such a liar," she says. "Or do you really think you've managed to outrun whatever-it-is? Your old life, maybe?"

"If I'm running from my old life, perhaps there's a reason, Miles."

"Was it very important?"

"The reason? Oh, yes."

"No, the thing you stole." She regards him placidly but expectantly.

Eames will never end up finding out how Miles knows he's a thief.

He swallows thickly and looks back up at the window. "I've stolen a lot of things in my time."

"Gold? Jewels? _Paintings_?" Giggling, she hugs his arm. "Or were you a spy? Stealing big manila folders in the dead of night with a torch between your teeth…"

"You've been watching too many films," he laughs.

"Perhaps it was something a little more French in nature, mm?" she purrs with sly, knowing eyes. "For untameable passion, you stole the virtue of some poor girl?"

He flinches.

She leans closer and waggles her eyebrows at him. "Or some poor _boy_?"

"Well, I won't deny stealing more than my fair share of other boys' virtue," he confesses.

Miles bounces with glee and utters a wholly inappropriate giggle right in the middle of all the austerity and solemnity of the most famous cathedral in all of France. "I knew it!" she growls, nose scrunching happily like a stalking tiger's.

"Yes, yes, you know all," he tells her in a tone of exaggerated placation.

They stand together for a long time in the dusty rainbow light, cuddled together like turtledoves, like lovers.

"Well, no matter what you're running from, you can always come home to me, Eames," she sighs against his shoulder.

_Oh_, how he loves dear, sweet Miles.

He presses his nose to her hair (she smells like water-lilies and vanilla). "You're far too good to me, Miles. You simply _must_ outlive me, dear—I don't know what I'd do without you."

"And what if I fell in love with someone?" she asks. "What if I got married, and he took me away? To England…to America…to…je sais pas où!"

"Hmm, well, I still don't know French, so that last one could be quite nice to visit."

She laughs again, bumps him with her hip. "You smart-aleck." Then she smiles up at him and rubs his shoulder through his coat. "You'll be all right."

Two years later, they'll meet a man named Dominic Cobb. It'll be love at first sight for Miles, and even if the two of them make Eames physically _ill_ sometimes with their doting, he'll be happy for her. Cobb will marry Miles and take her away to America, and Eames will realize that he's somehow relearned how to get by on his own (how to get into trouble on his own). When he gets tired and terrified and homesick and has to leave behind another name (name after name after name), he'll think of Mrs. Cobb ('No, darling, _Mal_—Mrs. Cobb just sounds so _old_.') and remember the way she rubbed his shoulder, and he'll know that as long as he still has the name Eames to come home to, he'll be all right.

**.End.**


	3. Supernova

**warnings:** pre-movie (slightly AU?). taking liberties with when/how the characters met and how long they've known each other. character death (Mal). language: pg (for damn).

**pairing:** none/gen.

**timeline:** two years before the movie.

**disclaimer:** Chris Nolan owns Inception and its characters. i just made up Eames' past.

**notes:** 1) intentional parallels to **Miss Miles**. 2) Cairo is gorgeous. i've only been once, but it was one of the coolest vacations i've ever had. 3) "mobile" is british for cell phone. 4) "ring" in this case is british for "call (on a phone)." 5) "sub cons" is the term Nolan used for aggressive projections.

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><p><strong>Supernova<strong>

Picture an old-and-new city on an ancient harbour, the very gateway of Egypt. Picture an ageless sand-colored building, rooms to let, with the warm wind carrying salt and spice-smells and the sounds of people. Picture a man in his prime, a man with the jagged shards of childhood tucked safely away and the pitted canyons of mid-life crisis still a decade or so distant.

He looks confused and terrified, the natural expression of the freshly orphaned child.

He sits up properly in his bed and asks again. "_What's_ happened?"

The voice on the telephone is cold and heavy when it repeats the answer. _~"Mallorie jumped from the twentieth floor of a hotel in Paris last night. She's dead, Eames. She _killed_ herself."~_

"That doesn't make any sense," the man tells his mobile.

Except that it does.

It makes perfect sense.

"Didn't she have her totem with her? Didn't she check?"

_~"I don't know,"~_ says the unsympathetic telephone. _~"Dom was the only witness, and he's understandably not really in any fit state to answer questions."~_

Of course not. Jesus. His wife just threw herself off a building; of course he's not in any fit state.

Very slowly, the world falls out of tilt and starts to go white.

"Look, I've," he says, distracted. "I've got to go. I'll ring you back. Or you can. Or." Words fail him, and he doesn't think he could keep himself together with that matter-of-fact voice in his ear, so he slides his phone shut.

This is not the first time his world has gone supernova, everything he cares about evaporating.

Once, Nicholas left his home, his name, his career. Now Sean's first and best friend is dead. Another home gone, ashes in white flash.

Perhaps in another ten years, when he's got another new name and he's built his world back up again on the same fragile human-shaped framework as ever, it'll all go white again.

Stupid. _Stupid_. He's already got a four-year-old scaffold shored up around paperwork and designer suits and dimples. And what the hell has that gotten him?

A cold voice on the telephone. Businesslike. Selling the con.

_Selling_ it, like he's a mark who needs convincing.

Hello. Your best friend just killed herself. You have a week to clear your schedule if you want to make the funeral.

The Nicholas in him says that it's perfectly practical, and practicality is one of the most useful coping mechanisms. The Sean in him wants to shout at Arthur for being such a damned _robot_ about it all.

Cal always said that emotional outbursts should be kept behind closed doors unless they serve a specific purpose.

Slowly, the man who was Nicholas and is sometimes Sean turns his head. The doors are closed, so he's behind closed doors. Fabulous.

He carefully puts his phone with his watch and wallet, a small collection of _things not to break or throw_.

And then he translates the supernova inside his head into a whirlwind inside the room.

When he's finished, and the room is mostly wrecked (nothing too expensive, nothing utterly irreplaceable that the landlady might go into tears over), he sits down in a sunny patch of bare floor and hugs his knees and thinks of Notre Dame.

And then he thinks of Cobb, who stole Miles from him in the first place, and he thinks, _'How could you let this happen?'_ Because this was always a major risk, if they're perfectly honest. Losing track of dream and reality makes you think you still need to wake up. Losing yourself in the torture chambers of your mind makes you wish you could wake up over and over again. There are a hundred little pitfalls for the unwary.

He wishes he'd listened to Cobb all those years ago. He wishes he'd kept his guard up, not just against outside threats (because the man called Eames is incredibly paranoid when it comes to those) but the ones from _within_. His dreamspace isn't populated with normal people anymore. There's the sub cons, a massive and mean black-clad army of humorless futuristic paramilitary fascists. But no _normal_ projections, no girl-with-the-Labrador-down-the-hall, no old-woman-doing-her-shopping, no school-children-on-an-outing. Sometimes there's Cal or Miles, and very rarely his mother.

And _him_.

No, don't think about it. Bury it. Encapsulation backward, from the outside in.

Just one more little thing falling down around his ears. One more thing Miles would've understood, would've sympathised with. One more reason for her to snuggle against him and say _'oh, poor Eames…'_ A snowflake in an avalanche. Miles was his home, and while he liked jet-setting from place to place, it was _because_ he'd always had Miles sitting in that heirloom rocking chair with a baby in her lap and a welcome-back smile.

Miles is gone.

He has no home.

Miles is _gone_.

He has _no home_.

He curls up in the middle of the floor, in one of the few places untouched by his outburst, and isn't stupid enough to insist he's too old or too proud to cry himself to sleep.

He dreams of Paris going thermonuclear.

Yeah. It's kinda like that.

**.End.**


	4. Phantasm

**warnings:** post-movie (slightly AU?). slashy undertones. taking liberties with when/how characters met and how long they've known each other. language: pg-13 (for s*** and g**damn).

**pairing:** one-sided Eames/Arthur.

**timeline:** several months post-movie; the day of **Frazzled**. the flashback probably takes place about a year before the movie.

**disclaimer:** Chris Nolan owns Inception and its characters.

**notes:** 1) you may remember from **Miss Miles** that Eames refers to Mal by her maiden name. 2) "steves" is short for "Steve McQueens," which is Cockney rhyming slang for "jeans." 3) "trainers" is British for "sneakers/tennis shoes." for those who are curious, the rhyming slang for "trainers" is "Gloria Gaynors." 4) "ruddy" is a gentler version of the British swear "bloody." 5) "the Professor" is Professor Miles, Mal's father. 6) "miffed" is British for "pissed off/angry." 7) Danny Miller is just another random working alias.

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><p><strong>Phantasm<strong>

"How do you do it?" Cobb asked as they sat at a bar after a job (Milan, and the bar was tragically hip).

Eames remembers being terribly confused, and wondering if he'd perhaps had more to drink than he thought, because he had no idea what Cobb meant. "I don't follow," he confessed, shaking his head.

Cobb took a long gulp of iced bourbon. "How…you're so _together_," Cobb said. After a moment, he eyed Eames sidelong. "You and Mal were…God, you acted like twins, attached at the hip and finishing each other's sentences and…"

Eames had to bite the inside of his cheek to keep from letting the sorrow show. "Yes, Miles and I were great friends," he murmured to his vodka. "But she's dead, and no amount of crying and carrying on will change that. I've known how to get by without her for a long while now."

They were quiet for a time, and Eames realized he hadn't answered Cobb's question.

"I do it," he said carefully, "by remembering a pretty French girl who smiled at me when I was lost. And then I imagine what would make her proud of me, and I do that. Mostly," he amended, thinking guiltily of the way he'd been avoiding Arthur.

"I'm so sorry," Cobb gushed suddenly.

Eames remembers being shocked, then feeling a hot flash of anger that simmered quickly into tepid pity. He remembers the pity so very clearly. He knows Cobb well enough to have never believed he'd pushed his wife in anything but a metaphorical sense.

"Good," he said. He didn't add that Miles and her parents were the closest thing he'd had to family since his teens. "Being sorry means you won't forget. Miles doesn't deserve to be forgotten."

And it's strange…he can't remember what Cobb said to that.

It doesn't matter terribly, because this is a dream.

Eames always knows when he's dreaming.

"Here you are, Sean," someone says. In the way of dreams, the voice is unidentifiable but familiar. This person is…important, somehow.

It doesn't make sense, because maybe five people on the planet call Eames by his fake first name. Miles and her parents. Yusuf's sister, Saja. Mads, the elderly Danish bookseller in Nairobi who introduced Eames to Yusuf.

Eames is always careful to keep his aliases from overlapping, the better to slip quickly into character when someone calls part of a name, so 'Sean' only goes with 'Eames,' and whoever-this-is must know him as Eames.

"Don't," whispers Cobb (the memory of Cobb), and he looks inexplicably frightened at the sound of that gentle, familiar voice.

Eames turns on his barstool.

After a momentary blur, the bar changes to a vague memory of one of Miles' houses—the one she and Cobb moved into when she got pregnant. The living room is a well-known place. An ugly grey couch, a beautiful rocking chair.

For an instant, he glimpses Miles. She takes a cardboard box from someone, smiles and laughs, walks into a different room.

"I've been looking all over for you," says the person who handed Miles the box.

Eames forces a smile.

It's Arthur, of course. A projection of him. Oversized tee, worn steves, _ancient_ trainers. He's beautiful, which is awful.

Eames remembers the sly old fondness in Miles' voice as she'd introduced them. _Oh! Artie, dear, have you met Sean?_ He remembers thinking he'd never seen a boy as uncomplicatedly complicated as 'Artie' (which was right). He remembers thinking 'probably straight as a ruddy beam' (which was only half right, he's fairly sure).

He remembers thinking 'I will never in my life be able to woo something that effortlessly aloof' (which is true thus far, but unfortunately didn't stop him falling in love like an idiot).

After the wash of memories, of silly, boyish feelings, he remembers that Artie has spoken to him.

"Have you?" Eames asks blithely, silently hoping to awaken without having to jump off something. An alarm clock, a ringing phone, someone shaking him awake, _anything_, if only it'll _hurry_.

Arthur—_Artie_—smiles. Dimples should not be that amazing. "I have, you good-for-nothing piece of shit," he says brightly. "Christ, you just can't do _anything_ right, can you?"

Eames just blinks slowly.

It's a little sick, perhaps, but while Eames has been trying to lose the knack of natural dreaming, his subconscious has been stubbornly weaving this _thing_, like a horrible, wonderful spiderweb.

Artie is no mere projection. Artie is a shade, a phantasm representative of one or more powerful emotions.

Shades, Eames knows from the Professor's theories, develop out of obsession. Either the subconscious decides what it wants to do to itself and picks an appropriate vessel, or it fixates on a vessel and chooses the appropriate behavior. The vast majority of shades are entities of self-flagellation, and most often take the form of parents, spouses, or dead friends. They are largely harmless, except in heavy users of Somnacin and similar drugs.

Eames' shade began appearing innocuously, at the edges of dreams, long before it developed into this looming specter of self-hate and self-doubt. It was a gradual process, so slow he didn't even notice until it was too late, and now he's stuck with this pretty, sadistic creature taking up residence in his mind. Languid and lovely and dangerous, like a Goddamn tiger. Unrequited love is a real _bitch_ sometimes.

Eames knows all this, and when he's awake, he's terrified of the very idea of Artie (few things can ruin a good team of extractors like the presence of an escaped shade).

But he's dreaming, and even though he knows he's dreaming (always knows), his subconscious tells him that Artie is an authority figure, a caretaker. Artie knows best.

"I need to wake up now," Eames tries, moving for the door. "I need to call Arthur."

Artie looks at Eames as though the idea is nonsensical. "Why? He's not going to want to talk to you."

Eames takes another slow step backward. "All the same," he says quietly, half-afraid he'll make Artie angry. "I've just thought of something. I should tell him."

Suddenly, slender hands grip his arms roughly—musician's fingers digging into the muscle without mercy. Artie is behind him; he can feel the soft rhythm of his breath.

Eames really _hates_ natural dreams.

"I don't think so," Artie says. "I don't think you'll be going _anywhere_."

"You're going to be _very_ miffed," Eames sighs. "And I'm sorry about that." He jerks his head back sharply, catches Artie on the nose hard enough to knock him into the door. He doesn't hesitate, doesn't look back. He runs full-tilt through the Cobb residence, darts out the back door, scales the sturdy fence with relative ease, and turns to free-fall backward into the middle of the street, half-amazed that he actually got away.

It won't be that easy from now on. Once you show your shade a willingness to engage in violence, all bets are off.

He jerks awake on the couch of his current team's safehouse and immediately grabs his phone. He's missed a lengthy text from Arthur about scouting new talent in LA. In Arthur's usual subtle way, he has made it known that he wants Eames present as soon as possible (mentions Saito and a number with a respectable amount of zeroes at the end).

Mikhail peers at Eames over the edge of a level design. "Didn't think you still dreamed, Danny," the Russian grunts.

Eames spares him a glance and a lopsided grin while he texts Arthur back. "Couple times a week. Sure as hell wish I didn't."

"Is it going to be a problem?"

"Mr. Danny Miller does not have problems," Eames retorts sharply. "Not ones that stop him forging, at least." He grins at Arthur's reply and quickly sets about snarking.

Mikhail snorts and goes back to his sketch pad. "Natural dreams are bad when you've been using as long as we have. Your brain gets too smart, starts to come up with nasty things. Monsters. Ghosts. Just don't let them follow you onto the job Sunday."

"Nothing follows me if I don't want it to, Mick," snaps Eames. He and Mikhail have a minor staring match that Eames wins.

"As you say, Danny."

Eames is in the middle of texting Arthur again when the team lead (Rachel, leggy redhead, bad temper) ducks into the dinky safehouse.

"Time for our dress rehearsal, boys," she says.

Eames very slowly and pointedly finishes spelling out _darling_ while Rachel grows more and more impatient. When it looks like she's about to blow her top, he adds a heart and hits the send button. "Right, okay," he acknowledges, putting his phone away.

**.End.**


	5. Gluttons for Our Doom

Artieeeeee. XD i'm unreasonably amused by this evil little fucker. he's too much fun, he really is.

**warnings:** post-movie (slightly AU?). exceedingly dysfunctional slashy leanings. mild violence. language: pg-13 (for f***, s***, and g**damn).

**pairing:** a little bit of Eames/Arthur.

**timeline:** several months post-movie; same day as **Breakfast at Tiffany's** and **Sunshine**.

**disclaimer:** Chris Nolan owns Inception and its characters.

**notes:** 1) the title comes from the Indigo Girls song "Prince of Darkness": "Someone's on the telephone, desperate in his pain / Someone's on the bathroom floor doing her cocaine / Someone's got his finger on the button in some room / No one can convince me, we are gluttons for our doom." 2) Mein Kampf is a famous book written by Adolf Hitler, and it's something like half autobiography, half political treatise. some of it makes a disturbing amount of sense, especially the political strategies, but a lot of it sounds like the inane ramblings of a psychotic racist. 3) "get to fuck" = "no way/I don't believe it." 4) "friends with Dorothy" is slang for being gay (because of Judy Garland's status as a beloved icon of gays). 5) "nicked" = "stolen." 6) "fag" = "cigarette." (yes, the Brits have also started to use it as an intensely derogatory term for homosexual men, but it's far less common over there than in America.) 7) "cuppa" = "cup of tea." 8) the M9 is a Beretta 9mm pistol that's probably the most widely-used by military and police worldwide. it's extremely lightweight and reliable. 9) Royal Doulton is a brand of tableware famous for extravagant patterned china. a conservative five-piece setting would run around $100-$150, so having a service for four (including serving dishes) would easily cost $1K. of course, it could cost more depending on the complexity of the pattern, the amount of gilding, and the age of the set...limited edition patterns would naturally cost (and be worth) more. 10) "flogged" = "sold." 11) Whitman wrote some amazing transcendental poetry. i recommend at least the first book of Leaves of Grass. i imagine Artie is reading **As I Ponder'd in Silence**. lol. also? Whitman was probably bi.

* * *

><p><strong>(We Are) Gluttons for Our Doom<strong>

Artie is reading Mein Kampf.

It's so out-of-character, so _un-Arthur_, yet it makes perfect sense, because Artie is not Arthur, is not real, and is, in fact, _a fucking psychopath_.

"Get to _fuck_," Eames says, with feeling.

"Little boys shouldn't swear, Sean," Artie chides.

This is why Eames should have just skipped the idea of sleep altogether. Should have downed a few of whatever the latest energy-thing is and stayed up watching bad television. A couple of natural dreams a week is a couple too many, because in natural dreams, he can't shut Artie out. In natural dreams, Artie does whatever he fucking well pleases.

"I'm not a little boy anymore," he tries, but Artie has a peculiar force of presence that never fails to make Eames' voice come out in an unsure mumble.

Artie only raises his eyebrows and turns a page.

Eames feels helpless and stupid. It's like being sixteen again, but without the awkward confessions ('Mum…I've made friends with Dorothy.' 'Yes.' 'No, I mean I've _made friends with Dorothy_.' 'Of course you have, dear. Didn't you think your mother would notice that her darling son is a homosexual? I shouldn't tell your stepfather, if I were you, mind.') or the nicked fags ('You've taken up smoking, darling.' 'Are you angry, Mum?' 'I will be if you don't share.').

He's too tired for this.

He does the only sensible thing.

He takes off his shoes, places them neatly beside the door, and walks in the direction he assumes will hold a kitchen. "I'll put the kettle on, shall I?"

Vaguely, he recalls his mother telling him at some point, 'When all else fails, have a cuppa—and if that doesn't work, an M9 will usually do the trick.' Eames' mother was a singular lady (may still be, for all he knows, since she vanished a few years before he fled to Paris).

"Oh, no," Artie says gently, setting Hitler aside and steering Eames to the armchair instead. "You just stay out of the way for a change. I'll make the tea."

Eames has a hysterical urge to start laughing, but he worries that if he does, he won't be able to stop.

The whistle of the kettle sounds like a scream.

Artie brings the tea in Eames' mother's Royal Doulton (which is patently illogical, since his stepfather flogged it ages back).

"Take your tea, Sean," Artie says.

"This is a dream," Eames retorts in childish defiance.

"And it will still hurt if I pour this in your Goddamn lap. Take the fucking cup."

He does.

Artie smiles and sits on the ottoman. "Now. How long have we been doing this? Four years? Five, now? Don't you think it's time you stopped being so stubborn?"

"This from you?" Eames snorts.

Still smiling, Artie raises a fist between them. "I can break your nose with one shot. Your jaw with maybe two. So let's not have any more of your fucking insolence, hm?" He tilts his pretty head, and his eyes are hard and full of hate.

Eames flinches. The situation is unpleasantly reminiscent of being young and staring down his stepfather. "I should very much like to wake up now," he says.

Artie laughs and pats Eames' knee. "No, no, you're going to drop that bullshit idea and stay right here with me, where you belong."

"I have things to do," he tries, thinking of Tak.

"Why bother? She's obviously better than you are, so it's not like you could really teach her anything. Saito didn't waste time on her the way your poor, naïve parents did on you—he knew exactly what to do with her. Bet she never once slowed him down the way you did your mother."

"You don't know anything about my mother."

"But I know plenty about you and how much of a fucking handicap you are. And I know no one would put up with it but me. But we both know that, don't we, Sean?"

Eames hesitates long enough to decide whether he's armed (Artie apparently left a gun next to Mein Kampf, how disturbingly appropriate…), then throws his tea at Artie as a distraction while he snatches up the weapon.

The result is Artie swearing over the sound of shattering porcelain and a disappointingly dull _click_.

"Safety first," the shade says as he twists the pistol out of Eames' grasp in a sharp, practiced motion. With a slide of his thumb, the safety is flicked off. It should be illegal to look so accomplished over such a bad pun.

Eames takes a shot to the hip, but he kicks out in time to tip the chair off-balance.

"Bloody fucking hell," he mutters as he lands on the floor of his hotel room sometime around eleven. After he collects himself and gets dressed for the day, he detours to Arthur's apartment and leaves a little brown case in his mailbox. At some point, Arthur will go home and check his mail and find it. Maybe he'll be angry, maybe he'll be put off.

Eames likes to think Arthur's curiosity will override either of those.

Compared to all the mess of natural dreaming with an increasingly bold shade, the real Arthur (even with his spectacular inability to spot sincere romantic overtures) is a welcome relief.

Eames and Tak leave the hotel for 'breakfast.' It clears his head some, but doesn't really make up for the poor quality of sleep the night before.

Arthur lays down a firm set of rules for them.

Ariadne builds the first level. Tak copies it on the second level, pulls Eames along as smoothly as possible. They are meant to bail if her dream is unstable, bail if any projections appear, bail as soon as the level's verified (or not, as the case may be).

They're starting small: a classroom.

Tak misses a detail in the skyline outside, but that's nothing compared to the oppressively blasé presence at the back of the classroom.

"Ooh, and what are we up to here?" Artie asks over the top of a book of Whitman.

Eames shoots Tak before she can turn.

Artie leans back in his chair with the sweetest smile Eames has ever seen on someone over the age of six (he distrusts it immediately). "I got out this time," he says. "It'll be easier next time."

Eames shoots him, too. "Fuck off, darling, I'm working."

Slowly, Eames sinks down at a nearby desk and wipes a hand over his mouth.

"I've got this," he tells the crumbling dream. "Everything is well in hand. This is nothing compared to Cobb's little problem on the Fischer job."

He wishes he believed that.

Shades only ever get stronger or die.

**.End.**


	6. Chaining the Serpent

i'm not the first person to imagine the concept of encapsulation. it just makes a lot of sense, within the framework Nolan set out.

**warnings:** post-movie (slightly AU?). OCs: Tak Shibuya. violence. language: pg-13 (for f*** and g**damn).

**pairing:** a hint of Eames/Arthur sentiment.

**timeline:** several months post-movie; the day after **Preliminary**.

**disclaimer:** Chris Nolan owns Inception and its characters.

**notes:** 1) the title is a reference to the act of Aker chaining Apophis so that Ra's vessel can travel safely through the Underworld each night. 2) "mobile" = "mobile phone," "cell phone." 3) Vans are a brand of skate shoe. classic Vans are flat pull-ons with a deep hexagonal tread that grips surprisingly well on wet surfaces. 4) "to poke fun at someone" is the same as "to make fun of someone." 5) the Gulag was the soviet system of corrective labor camps employed during the first half of the twentieth century. in western usage, the term gulag has been applied to each individual camp or prison complex rather than the overall system. generally, the conditions for prisoners were poor and they were worked longer and harder hours than civilian laborers; some camps even literally worked their prisoners to death (though this was probably not widespread, and was more than likely a punishment reserved for prisoners that the camp's administrator particularly disliked). 6) there's a huge difference between fighting the average man (even a trained soldier) and fighting a well-trained woman who is flexible enough to tie herself into a pretzel. it results in unpleasant surprises like being kicked from unexpected directions and having a pair of legs squeeze the circulation out of your arm. 7) a cannula is a tube connected to (or surrounding) a needle, such as an IV line.

* * *

><p><strong>Chaining the Serpent<strong>

Eames would rather not let Tak fiddle with his subconscious. Quite aside from the concentration required to keep from fully populating a dream when hooked up to the PASIV as the subject, his mind doesn't like outsiders. To the best of his knowledge, three teams have tried to extract from him in the past, and they were all very rudely expelled by his sub cons after several minutes of what most people would call torture (Eames wouldn't, because he knows what _real_ torture is).

There's no guarantee Artie will show up, either. Will proprietary interest be enough to tempt him into a compromising position?

And _if_ they manage to get Artie into a dream with them, there's still the fact that Artie is smart, and strong, and violent.

But he doesn't need anyone else finding out about Artie, and if Tak can help him lock the bastard up for a while, maybe he'll finally go a week without being talked down to in his sleep. The only person besides Tak who could help is Cobb, and Cobb would tell Arthur.

Eames is nervous.

He's undergone encapsulation before, just never on such a scale. When you lock away memories and emotions from _yourself_, you have to put them somewhere very secure, somewhere you won't accidentally go during regular dreaming or dream-sharing. The more you lock up, the greater the risk that you'll be reminded of it—a hint of a familiar building, a book with similar binding, the way a woman touches the shoulder of her teenage son… If they manage to lock Artie up, he could be set free by something as simple as a passing glance at Arthur.

Eames slides his mobile open and closed several times, a thoughtful little _click-click_ noise that soothes him and probably drives Arthur mad.

"That's new," Arthur says without turning from his laptop. "Usually, you've got a coin or a poker chip."

"Y'mean like this?" Eames asks innocently, and pulls out the worn poker chip, flipping it through the fingers of his free hand while he continues to slide his mobile open and closed.

"You only multi-task when something's bothering you. Did something go wrong on the preliminary extraction?"

"Wouldn't we have told you if it did?"

Arthur pauses, turns his head just far enough for Eames to be in his periphery. "Would you? One forger is arrogant enough, I'm sure the two of you together think you can talk your way out of _anything_."

Eames closes his eyes for a moment. "Is that a compliment?" he asks with a smirk.

"No," says Arthur. "It means you're too stubborn to know when you're in over your head."

"I've never been in over my head," Eames lies easily. "Don't worry yourself so much, darling, I'm just thinking of the forge Miss Golightly will be teaching me when she gets back today."

Arthur turns properly, eyebrows raised in interest. "I suppose that makes sense," he mumbles. "It never occurred to me before, that a skilled forger could teach another forger how to imitate someone he'd never observed. It opens interesting options…"

Eames just smiles blithely. It only occurred to him a few years ago, but he assumed that no forger worth his trade would share one of his masks.

He clicks his mobile some more, pauses with the screen up to see if he's missed anything important. Two job offers for the coming month (for two different aliases), a follow-up from Rachel, a message from his landlord in Mombasa telling him that air-conditioning is being installed in the building.

Tak barges in like she owns the place. She's dressed like a boy today (overcomplicated jeans, Vans with an elaborate tsunami design on the toes, an ill-fitting hoodie with some Japanese band silk-screened on the back). "Let's get started, Cat. Arthur—the PASIV, if you please."

Arthur doesn't say anything, but Eames senses his curiosity as he opens the room's safe and brings the precious case over.

Tak situates herself across an overstuffed chair, head and neck pillowed on one armrest, legs dangling over the other.

"Are you fine with being the dreamer?" Arthur asks. "Or do I need to switch out the canisters?"

"It's fine," Tak tells him.

So Arthur slips the primary lead into her wrist for her, reaches for the subject lead, hesitates for a moment.

"Arthur?" Eames says, holding his hand out.

Arthur just gives him a long, appraising look.

"I know you don't fully appreciate what we do, Arthur," Tak says, "but it involves a surprising amount of work, and it'd be nice to get on with it."

But Arthur doesn't give up when he puts his mind to something.

Eames does what he always does to deflect Arthur's attention: he pokes fun. "Been around _you_ too long, darling, she's turning into a terrible little slave-driver."

Raising an eyebrow, Arthur takes Eames' wrist in hand (his fingertips are cool to the touch) and threads needles into flesh with a practiced motion. "When this job is over, Mr. Eames, you and I are going to have a little chat about how to recognize when you're in over your head."

"I look forward to it," Eames says, just before Arthur pushes the button.

"Bring him in," Tak says. She's wearing a mean-looking pair of boots, and her knuckles are taped up.

They're in a dank concrete box of a room, heavy restraints on one wall at shoulder and ankle height.

"Be careful," he tells her again, unnecessarily.

She shoots him a look that may be two parts insult, one part pity. "Just bring him in. And stay out of the way, because we need you conscious and him alive."

He nods. It's almost imperceptible, the difference between straining to keep everything shut in and allowing just enough leeway for the strongest parts to leak out. Outside, someone yells to them.

Tak answers in something that sounds like Russian.

"A gulag, how fascinating," Artie says, looking around. "Whips and chains and all kinds of naughty things, hm? The girl has some kink to her."

Tak watches for a moment—just watches. Still as a predator, head low and shoulders back.

Eames wonders how she's planned this out.

"Not armed this time, honey?" Artie asks her. "That's okay, I brought my own."

It's a matter of three seconds and an unfortunate crunching noise to land Artie face down on the floor while Tak takes apart the gun and tosses the pieces.

"That was my _knee_," Artie grunts. "That wasn't very ladylike."

Tak beckons with both hands. "Get up and stand against the wall."

Artie laughs. The sound makes the hairs stand up on the back of Eames' neck. "She doesn't play along like you do, Sean," the shade laments. "How boring."

"Get your skinny ass up and stand against the wall," she repeats. "Or I'll make you do it."

When she reaches down, Artie twists and kicks her over to the side in a move Eames has seen Arthur use. Tak waits for him to try to pin her, whips her leg around and kicks him in the collarbone. He fights, of course, but he's limited by Eames' memory and imagination—and Tak is a better and faster fighter. Tak fights like something out of a martial arts movie, lightning speed and incredible flexibility. By the time she gets one of Artie's wrists secured to the wall, he's a battered mess and she only has a bloody nose.

Eames feels useless.

"Look at you, letting a little girl do your work," Artie coughs.

"Don't," Tak says, looking straight at Eames. Her eyes are sharp, almost scolding, like her uncle's. "Don't listen, and don't think. You're the one who gives this _thing_ power. Just stand there and _let me help you_."

"How sweet," sneers Artie.

"For fuck's sake, shut it," she snaps, kneeing him in the gut so that she can finish chaining him to the wall.

When the fourth lock clangs shut, Eames stumbles back against the opposite wall and sags in relief.

The shade laughs again—a ghastly, deranged sound—and grins with blood-stained teeth. "And just how long do you expect this to hold me? How long do you _really_ think you can keep me locked away?"

"Long enough, one hopes," Eames replies breathlessly.

Tak wipes blood from her nose and hits him gently on the shoulder. "Hey. Don't look at him, look at me."

He drags his gaze away from the imprisoned shade.

"I don't know if there's a name for what that thing is," she says softly. "But it's strong, and it's mean, and it's a product of your own mind. Now, I would've expected something like this from someone slightly unhinged, someone working his way past trauma like Mr. Cobb, but you always _seem_ like you're in control."

Eames feels a stab of guilt.

Tak's eyes harden again. "But you're _not_, are you?" she whispers. "You've been extracting for eight years, Mr. Eames—eight years. How old is that thing?"

"You're whispering, but my ears are burning," Artie calls. "You must be talking about me. I'm flattered."

"No one gives a fuck about your imaginary feelings, dream-puppet," Tak tells him over her shoulder. Then she lowers her voice again. "How old is it, Mr. Eames?"

"Five, I think," he grudgingly answers.

Her eyes widen, and he swears she goes white as a ghost. She punches his shoulder a little harder. "Five? _Five_? Haven't you heard of _therapy_? No, therapy's for people who aren't in control, and you always think you _are_, because you're incredibly deluded, which is apparently what it means to be the world's greatest forger, _GoddammitEames_."

Annoyed, he rubs at the spot she hit. "Yes, thank you for pointing out all the most obvious landmarks, dear, but I really had spotted them."

"He's going to get out," she murmurs. "We never truly forget. You won't think of him for a while, but sooner or later you'll remember. You'll think of him, or of whatever he's made of, and _there he'll be_. If you don't find a way to get rid of him for good, someone is going to get hurt."

Eames knows she's right, but he'd rather shoot himself in the foot than ever tell anyone about the jumble of things that Artie is built from. And _therapy_? God, he'd rather shoot himself in _both_ feet.

After a moment, Tak draws a deep breath and steps back. "I'm going ahead, just in case. I won't be long." Then she raises her hands and snaps her own neck.

"Jesus," Eames hisses, surprised.

"Oh, she's good," chuckles Artie, as the lights flicker and the room begins to shake. "Y'know, I didn't even think that was possible. Just full of surprises."

Dust and little pebbles start to fall from the ceiling, and the guard-projections outside are shouting urgently.

"Don't think you can keep me buried here forever, Sean. You enjoy our time together too much for that, you masochist. You kick and scream and whine like a fucking girl, but how else do you explain the fact that I'm still here? Just wait…one of these days, you'll be on a job, and he'll be there, and then _I'll_ be there, and we'll all have so much fun together while I break his fingers one by—"

Eames startles awake, grasping at his wrist where Tak has hurriedly yanked the cannula. He blinks at her several times. His wrist is bleeding from twin punctures.

"My fault," Tak says evenly. "Arthur, I think my mixture's off again. I'll go get Saja and see what she can do."

Arthur glares at her back as he kneels between Eames and the machine, dabbing carefully at the blood spots with an alcohol pad to inspect the damage. "She couldn't have just tipped the chair over?" he mutters.

Eames just watches him, feeling slightly stunned like he's drugged or half-asleep.

"Lucky she didn't tear the vein," Arthur grunts in heavy disapproval.

Eames suspects he's forgotten something. Something important. But no—no, they went under to make him forget something, so this is good. This is what happens when you encapsulate; your brain has to reset, has to shuffle things around, like carrying a box full of old toys to the attic.

Arthur looks at him, all frowns and sternness, and suddenly reaches up to tug at Eames' eyelid. "Hey," he says. "_Hey_, look at me. Are you all right?"

"Why wouldn't I be?" Eames asks, batting him away. "Just a little collapse, a little bit of being buried alive under a building. Happens."

After a moment, Arthur's expression smoothes over. Aloof, he stands up. "You're a liar, Mr. Eames," he says coldly. "And you don't seem to know when you should stop." And he turns and stalks back to the writing desk, where his laptop's screensaver has come on.

"I'm okay," Eames says. "For now, at any rate." He forces himself to sit up, despite an odd sensation of lethargy. "Your concern is quite touching, though." Standing seems to take a great deal of effort. Walking is more like skating. He lands on his bed and toes his shoes off.

"Someone's going to trip over those," Arthur grumbles.

"I don't plan on going that way again for the next few hours, at least. So unless you're going to be sneaking to my bedside, darling, no one is going to trip over my shoes." He settles down, feeling the same heavy drowsiness of going under. He smiles. "Though if you do mean to sneak over here, feel free to move them."

He sleeps, and doesn't dream. It's beautiful.

**.End.**


	7. Darling, Don't Put Down Your Guns Yet

Eames in Limbo.

**warnings:** post-movie (slightly AU?). taking liberties with how the characters met/how long they've known each other. crossover lolwut. language: pg-13 (for use of s*** & f***).

**pairing:** hints of Eames/Arthur.

**timeline:** several months post-movie; same day as **A Winning Team** and **Interim** (both part of **Waiting for the Kick**).

**disclaimer:** Chris Nolan owns Inception and its characters.

**notes:** 1) the title is a reference to the Editors song "Papillon," for which the Forger arc is named. 2) age is probably extremely flexible in Limbo. 3) prefects are like student leaders; they're picked from the ranks of the students and given the responsibility of keeping order and disciplining the members of their houses. 4) "rubbish" = "trash," "bullshit." 5) "bollocks" = "balls," "bullshit." 6) Lower Sixth is the second-to-last year of secondary schooling. 7) field game is...kind of like rugby. football here is, of course, soccer (really, Americans, how can you call your rugby-like game "football" when you mostly use your hands?). 8) "Summer Half" = "summer term." 9) to "give something a go" means to "give it a try." 10) Manson as in Charles Manson. 11) if you know who the Cockney on the couch is, you either steal my thoughts a lot or geek on the same shows. 12) a "flat" is an apartment or suite on a single floor. 13) Glock 17 = super-reliable semi-automatic pistol. Parabellum = a variety of 9mm ammo.

* * *

><p><strong>Darling (Don't Put Down Your Guns Yet)<strong>

Sean isn't sure how long he's been here.

It must've been a long time—years. He doesn't remember arriving. He has vague memories of walking a long way and through a lot of familiar places. Warm places, sandy places, places where he could smell salt on the air. There are impressions of people…Mum, and Uncle, and Professor, and Miles…grins and blackboards and guns, but he doesn't remember anyone, not _really_…

For a long time, he was haunted by the feeling that he'd forgotten something very important. He mostly ignored it, since he was fairly certain he'd forgotten _everything_. Then when Artie found him, the feeling went away.

"Me," Artie said with a pretty smile. "You forgot _me_, Sean."

He'd been so relieved that he hugged Artie tightly and maybe cried a little. He remembers the tugging sensation of his stubble catching on the fabric of Artie's shirt, but that doesn't make sense—he's only sixteen and he still hasn't shown signs of a beard coming in.

So many things seem odd, seem out-of-order, seem _wrong_.

He goes to school and doesn't remember what he's learned, but when Artie asks him about homework he replies properly (and can't remember what he's said afterward). He doesn't know how he gets to school—possibly a bus is involved at some point. He doesn't know who his teachers are, their names, their faces. He can't remember what house he's in, who his prefects are. His name is unfamiliar when he writes it down. He never remembers what he had to eat the day before, only that there's always tea when he gets home from school.

He's always a little shocked when staircases end. What a prize piece of rubbish, that! Staircases are supposed to end; they're for getting from one floor to the next, not running 'round in perpetual circles.

If he mentions any of these little pieces of strangeness to Artie, he gets a slap in the face for his trouble. "Behave yourself," Artie says right afterward, and Sean does. He's terrified of Artie without understanding why.

_There's_ another item of complete bollocks. Why should he be frightened of Artie? Artie takes care of him. Artie provides food and shelter. Artie helps with his homework. Artie listens to all his troubles. He's not afraid of Artie hurting him (Artie wouldn't, but even if he did, Sean would probably just hit back). He's afraid…_for_ someone?

For…

_…fluttering eyelashes, a pink blush starting to spread from ears to cheeks…he smiles and fastens a shirt cuff with a little drop of sunshine…'Mr. Eames, I know diamonds when I see them…'_

No, it's gone. That memory slips away like a jellyfish in water, like so many memories.

But what does he care about memories? He's in Lower Sixth, good at field game and star of the footballers, envied and beloved by all. Come Summer Half, he wants to give rowing a go.

"You are _thinking_ too hard," Artie says without looking away from his book.

"Am I?" Sean asks, puzzled. "I suppose I could be, at that. What's for dinner, darling?"

Artie answers, but the words are gone in an instant.

Sean doesn't remember what Artie said, only that it was something he likes. "Cheers," he says in grateful approval.

He sits there at Artie's feet for a moment longer, watches Artie watching him over the edge of—is that Manson? Again, he feels a flicker of fear, like Artie could and would do something very unpleasant to someone Sean cares about. Again, he feels that he's sitting with an enemy, a predator waiting to pounce.

The _wrongness_ nags at him again. Artie is…the wrong age? Or Sean is. Their names are wrong.

Artie smiles, and Sean feels sick.

"I'm not supposed to be here," Sean realises. "This is all wrong. _All of it_. Where are all the people? What did I have for lunch yesterday, what _day_ is it, _why do the staircases end_?"

"All very good questions," says a Cockney on the sofa.

Sean turns to look—no one else has ever been in Artie's flat, as far as he knows.

The man on the sofa is ten or fifteen years older than Sean, unkempt and grinning and almost, _almost_ familiar. "_But_…you know the answers," he goes on in a slow, deliberate way.

"I don't," Sean denies with a shake of his head. "I want to, but I _don't_."

"_Rrrrubbish_," says the man, drawing out the R. "You know exackly what's goin' on here, or you would if you'd just stop listening to that yapping fake. 'E only _looks_ like someone you can trust. Look again, go on. Watch 'is face. You 'aven't forgot _everything_ I taught you…"

The annoyed tension around Artie's eyes belies his smile when Sean looks back at him.

"No," Sean says. "No, he's not who he looks like. How is that possible?"

"You _know_ how it's possible. You know _exackly_ how."

"Don't listen to him, Sean," Artie tells him. "He's a liar."

The man grins. "Now, _that_ I am."

But Sean believes him. There's only one place where you alternately remember nothing and remember perfectly. "I'm dreaming," he whispers.

The sound of the gun going off is both louder than Sean ever thought it would be and exactly as loud as he thought it would be.

_Glock 17 with standard Parabellum rounds._

The sensation of being shot in the throat is utterly new—a burn, more than anything, and a trickle of wet heat.

_…when you die in a dream, you wake up…when you die in a dream, you wake up…_

Artie sighs as he shoves Sean's shoulder with one foot to take aim again. "What did I tell you about that fucking insolent streak of yours, you worthless little shit?" he asks, never raising his voice. "Bringing a stray into my apartment took some real balls—fortunately, you'll forget him just like you forget everything else."

_…unless you _can't_ wake up…_

Sean chokes and listens to the tiny metallic noise of a spring responding to the trigger's squeeze.

He wakes up with his head on Artie's knee.

"Just a nightmare," Artie assures him. "It's all right. I'm here. I'll always be here."

"Someone's missing," Sean says.

"Oh? We should report it to the police, then."

Sean shakes his head. His thoughts won't line up, and his memory is fuzzy. "No, it's…I can't remember who it is."

"Well, then he can't have been important."

The words feel heavy, ominous.

Artie pets Sean's cheek and smiles. "I'm all you need. No one else matters."

Sean shivers, and doesn't know why.

**.End.**


	8. Way Out in the Water

idk. crack and some more Eames backstory. because playing in Limbo leaves a mark.

**warnings:** post-movie (slightly AU?). OC: Tak Shibuya. taking liberties with how the characters met/how long they've known each other. implied physical abuse. mild violence, craziness. brief crack, pop culture references. language: pg-13 (for use of s***).

**pairing:** some Arthur/Eames.

**timeline:** several months post-movie; day before **David**.

**disclaimer:** Chris Nolan owns Inception and its characters.

**notes:** 1) title comes from the song "Where Is My Mind." 2) Chitty Chitty Bang Bang is the name of a magical motorcar (that was amphibious and could fly), and it came out of the mind of Ian Fleming, the dude who wrote the James Bond novels. Scaramanga was the Man With the Golden Gun. 3) The Electric Mayhem are the muppet band for whom Animal is drummer. 4) Roy Batty was the main antagonist in Blade Runner. 5) the English habit of adding milk to tea has to do with neutralizing the tannins in tea, making it less bitter and gentler on the stomach. 6) "derringer" is a generic term for a compact pistol. 7) "SAS" = "Special Air Service," a British special forces group that served as the model for several prominent SF groups worldwide. 8) i was tempted to describe the Willy Wonka dream a little more, but i don't know where i would've gone with it; mainly, it featured Veruca!Tak and Violet!Ariadne, plus Yusuf in a foam sumo-suit as Augustus Gloop.

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><p><strong>Way Out in the Water<strong>

The real bitch of getting stuck in Limbo is the recovery.

The papers on the subject are half conjecture, half piecemeal anecdote…

This is what we _think_ will happen, _if_ you get out without going insane.

Eames was ready for alternating bouts of sleeplessness and narcolepsy. He was ready for lethargy and fever and aches and unpredictable appetite.

Eames was _not_ ready for sudden, uncontrollable, incredibly bizarre dreams. He was _not_ ready to dream without realizing he was dreaming.

Curled under the blankets in his hotel room, he slips into driving Chitty Chitty Bang Bang through Santa Monica with a picnic basket full of purple kittens. At a red light, he gets carjacked by Scaramanga, who flies away laughing like Santa Claus, flinging kittens endlessly over the side, where they turn into stuffed toys as they hit the ground.

"What the ever-loving…?" he yelps, twitching upright.

City-noise, and a night light, and a battered old telephone on the bedside table.

When he drifts off again, he's striding down a beach barefoot, but he's pretty sure he's a woman. A bunch of half-dressed hippies are playing volleyball with a severed human head, and he's about to point this out to them when he finds himself walking past a small stage, where Cobb is singing Escape to the accompaniment of the Electric Mayhem. He's about to huffily ask Cobb what he means by stealing Dr. Teeth's band, but then the Blue Man Group barrels through, Tak hot on their heels and swinging a katana while threatening them in Japanese.

His phone rings.

When he answers it, it keeps ringing.

Then he wakes and answers his phone again.

"H'lo?"

_~"Eloquent as always, Mr. Eames,"~_ snorts Arthur with extreme sarcasm.

"'M I awake? Y'wouldn' lie 'bout that, yeah?"

_~"Can I trust you to get dressed and take a cab over here, or should I have your apprentice fetch you?"~_

Eames presses his face into the pillow and thinks. "I have an apprentice?" he finally says, having tried and failed to remember what Arthur means.

_~"Four-ten, half-Japanese, obnoxiously smug? Fights off hired assassins in her spare time?"~_

"She was chasing the Blue Man Group with a sword," Eames realizes.

Arthur says nothing for a time. _~"Mr. Eames, check your totem. I'm sending Tak to pick you up."~_

"And Cobb was singing. It was awful, darling. I'm frightened. Hold me."

_~"I'm hanging up now, Eames."~_

"At least tell me what you're wearing."

Arthur hangs up.

Check his totem. Easy enough.

…

But his brain insists it's been forty or fifty years since he had a totem. He can't remember what the hell it was.

No. Think.

Before Miles ever came up with totems, they had other tricks.

This is his hotel room. He's been staying here while they train the girls in synergistic architecture and test out Yusuf's new compound, but the ratios were bad (the ratios were _shite_) and he landed in Limbo, and that's why his brain is so gooey. Cobb drove him back here with instructions for bed rest and clear fluids, saying that Arthur and the girls would take care of him in the morning (today).

If he can remember all that, he's probably awake. He gets dressed (he just throws on any old thing) and tries to remember what day of the week it is without consulting his phone.

The world is soft and washed-out and full of white noise. He suddenly remembers his mother in a peach sundress in Alexandria, hair gone pale from the summer afternoons outdoors, laughing and beckoning.

"I said, 'have you eaten yet.'"

Eames startles.

Tak is there, bag on her shoulder as she leans over to peer into his eye. "Let's get you to Arthur's suite, hm? Mr. Cobb said you should be around people while you're recovering."

"You wouldn't let Cobb sing Escape, would you?" he needs to know.

"The Enrique Iglesias song?" she asks, looking confused.

"No, not th—the Piña Colada song."

"Oh. No, I wouldn't let him sing that one, either."

"Thank God for you, Miss Golightly!" he cries in relief.

She leads him off, trundles him to Arthur's hotel, pays the cabbie.

A young boy is bouncing a football on his knee, and Eames abruptly remembers playing footie in sixth form. But he lived with the stepfather then, in walking distance of Eton campus. He didn't live in Arthur's flat, and he didn't take a bus. Stained brown plaid armchair, with cigarette burns. A fist with a gaudy gold ring. A leather belt that snaps like a whip.

Someone tugs him forward by the wrist, and he stumbles into motion. Rodeo Drive. Bright lobby, elevator ride.

Tak unlocks and opens the door, shoos him through the room to a comfy chair. "You just sit here and _relax_," she says firmly.

"I hear a windchime that isn't there," he announces.

The wicker rocking chair at the Miles residence creaks just _so_, and Jeanne uses the noise to lull her overworked husband to sleep for an after-tea nap. Then Miles gets up and takes her father's glasses, folding them safely away before he can fall on them or smudge them.

"Breakfast, Eames," says Tak. "And Ariadne's here."

"Hullo, Ariadne," he says with a sleepy grin. "Forgive me for not standing."

But Ariadne shakes her head. "You just rest up and eat your breakfast."

He manages half a croissant before his appetite fails for the moment. And then he's delivering a bag of jelly babies to the door of a big blue police box, and Cobb and Saito are skipping down the sidewalk hand-in-hand like a pair of grammar school girls. Roy Batty stops them to ask if they've seen his friend's snake anywhere, but Saito shoots him. The wound leaks candy instead of blood.

Eames pauses for a moment, because he's sure that somebody should have stopped that sort of thing. He has the strange feeling that there should be soldiers in black—a lot of them—keeping people safe here.

He's sitting in a chair, watching the world go by in fast-forward. Two girls sleeping on a couch, laughing, drawing. Room service. Curtains stirring, cars outside, the hiss of a sprinkler on someone's lawn.

He's sitting in a chair, and Arthur's touching his hand and saying something.

"What?" he asks, blinking.

"Tea," says Arthur. "You need to drink something, so I made you a cup."

He looks at the dark liquid vaguely. "Where's the milk?" he asks, because the tannins disagree with him.

Arthur and the tea go away somewhere.

Eames is no longer Eames. For a moment, he is only Nicholas, sitting on the front step, angry at the world and sucking every last bit of nicotine from the fag he bummed off Cal.

"Someone's going to notice that," Cal says.

Nicholas touches the bruising around the side of his nose tenderly. "Lads in sports get knocked about all the time," he grunts.

"A football to the head don't bruise like that, Nicky."

"Don't tell her. She doesn't need the bother, and I've got it sorted."

Cal gives him a long, knowing look. "I know you 'ave."

He's sitting in a chair.

Something warm is in his hands—a cup of tea, with milk this time. A bit too much milk, really, but it's the thought that counts.

He's Eames again, groggy as hell and wondering how a cup of tea got into his hands.

"Drink your tea, Mr. Eames," says Arthur.

He does, while the world moves in fast-forward again.

Someone takes away the cup when it's empty. Someone tugs him out of his chair and out the door and back down to that bright lobby, dim now in the purple of evening. The cab smells strongly of wet dog. He trips once going up the steps to his hotel room.

"You should go to the bathroom before you go to bed," Tak tells him.

He does. He also brushes his teeth.

He was eight when his mother taught him how to use a derringer. They were in Ghana, on safari, and she had him aiming at ripe fruit hanging in the trees. When they left the forests for the savannah, she shot an antelope with the rifle she never let him touch. She was daring and beautiful, and he loved her as much as he loved Africa, and he wished they could be on holiday together for the rest of their lives.

He realises he's left all the lights off, so he switches one on before he settles in bed.

He smiles at the look on his stepdad's face when the lights go up. How was he ever afraid of this cowering, past-prime old sneak-thief?

"Who the bloody hell're you?"

"Come now, it hasn't been that long, _Dad_," Nicholas purrs.

"Nick?" the man laughs, nervously. "Lookit you, lad. All growed-up."

Nicholas keeps smiling. "Do you know, when the Ministry of Intelligence scouts you as a field operative, they send you to SAS training? And other kinds of training, too… They taught me a lot of things, really, so who can say how much came from where? Let's have a go, Dad. You and me, man-to-man. Call me a filthy little homo. Hit me. Show me what you've got."

In real life, his stepfather ran like the devil was on him. Now, the fool takes a swing. The crunch of bone under his fist feels like freedom. On the edges of the room, people stand and applaud.

Tak nudges the groaning man with her foot. "Are you done with this?" she asks. "Because we have work to do."

Eames rolls over and dreams that Cobb is Willy Wonka. He's fairly certain he's going mad.

**.End.**


	9. Whisperlude

no context! XD Eames wakes up in an unfamiliar place.

**warnings:** post-movie (slightly AU?). taking liberties with how the characters met/how long they've known each other. fluff and slight crack. teeny hint of crossover. language: pg-13 (for use of s*** & f***).

**pairing:** Arthur/Eames.

**timeline:** several months post-movie; some as-yet-undetermined time after **Darling**.

**disclaimer:** Chris Nolan owns Inception and its characters.

**notes:** 1) title from Pogo's Little Princess mix "Whisperlude." the word is a portmanteau of "whisper" and "interlude." 2) PIN = Personal Identification Number, the little number you punch into ATMs and Debit readers to verify that you're the proper owner of your bank card. 3) Iain M. Banks is a noted sci-fi action author. he has a very visceral and straightforward approach to writing violence. 4) a magazine is an ammo clip. 9mm is the right calibur for several common handguns. 5) "arse over teakettle" is a british-ism similar to "head over heels." to go "arse over teakettle" is to fall headlong. 6) "the Paranoid Chair." that line comes straight from an episode of one of my favorite shows, uttered by the Cockney from **Darling**. 7) a "flat" is an apartment or suite on a single floor. 8) sellotape is the british equivalent of scotch tape. 9) the british (and most europeans, actually) make a very firm distinction between pancakes and griddlecakes. a british pancake is basically a crepe. 10) "beaker" = "mug." 11) "fag" = "cigarette." 12) "bloody" is a british expletive that can be used in approximately the same way as "fucking" or "goddamn." 13) "Beam Black" is "Jim Beam Black Label," a fairly nice bourbon. 14) "icebox" = "freezer." i hear that parts of the US use the word "icebox," too, but i always hear "freezer." 15) poor Isaac probably doesn't intentionally kill off his pets, but goldfish get sick easily and hamsters don't live very long in the first place.

* * *

><p><strong>Whisperlude<strong>

Eames is awakened by the play of sun and shade dappling through a window. There's a tree outside, and a breeze carries the sound of its rustling leaves through the screened gap between pane and sill. Somewhere, a wind chime is singing. He doesn't know how he got here. Could have been drunk. Could have been drugged. Could be dreaming right now.

His hand goes to his pocket—but no, he doesn't have his totem, he's wearing a pair of sweats and some old shirt that's snug in the right places to suggest he hasn't worn it for about five years (a few years before Miles jumped, he'd been the It Man, the go-to, running around the world at a break-neck pace with no time for proper sleep or exercise, so he'd lost muscle; in the two years between her death and the Fischer job, he'd petulantly made the extractors come to him, and so he'd put on a slightly indulgent ten pounds around the middle that he's since worked off in the pleasant leisure following the arrival of Saito's check).

For a moment, he's not sure what his totem is, anyway. He changes it every other job or so, as much to keep it a secret as to help him mark the passage of time. He's always thought it rather daft for people to hang onto the same totem for years on end. That's like never changing your PIN. Just a flimsy, increasingly less valid illusion of security. And anyway, if you get lost at a deep enough level, lost enough to build dream-cities out of memories, you're more likely to try and fool yourself with old, well-known things (or so the Professor theorized).

He held onto the poker chip for too long, he knows. He also knows he's switched since then. Try as he might, he can't remember what he switched to.

He doesn't recognize the room. He doesn't see any of his things nearby.

On the bedside table is an Iain Banks with an indigo ribbon marking the reader's place. In the drawer are fast-release painkillers, a loaded nine millimetre magazine, and a wallet-sized photograph of a smiling woman and child. On the back of the photograph, curled writing dubs them Shelley and Isaac (as of '04). There's something familiar in the woman's wavy hair, in the little boy's dimples.

When Eames tries to stand, his head spins for a moment. Maybe he hit his head; maybe that's why he's been brought wherever-this-is.

Then he notices a numb weight in his side and realizes he's been stitched and bandaged.

And someone is cooking.

Odd things to note simultaneously.

He catches a scent of batter (waffles?), and his stomach growls.

Eames takes his time. If this is a dream, he has no reason to rush. If it's not, he has no reason to want to tumble arse over teakettle onto the oak planking.

The next room over is the sitting room. A nice TV on the wall, the latest players tucked away below it. Enormous plush sofa, glass-topped coffee table (with a small paper sack in the middle, atop some magazines), potted English ivy reaching wistfully toward the windows. And just beyond the couch, tucked in a corner, a leather armchair and ottoman with a reading table and lamp by the right arm.

_The Paranoid Chair, best seat in the house._

Eames understands that the chair and reading table are significant, in the muzzy way that the heavily anaesthetised often do.

But it's all entirely too surreal. He must be dreaming.

_Easy now,_ he tells himself. _Don't do anything drastic just yet._

That way lies madness, after all. That way lies sweet Miles throwing herself off a building. Eames likes to think that people would be very put out if he went the way of Miles. Ariadne, at least. And some other little girl he can't seem to remember just now. Half the criminal extraction world (for his professional talents). Yusuf and Saja would miss him (as would Yusuf's cat, Janna). Cobb would be upset. Maybe one or two people from his old life, if they haven't already assumed he's dead.

He gradually crosses the room (slow and steady, that's the ticket), pauses when he sees the front door. He's standing in line with the chair and the front door, and he abruptly recalls a very pretty, very unhappy face crowned with sloppy dark curls. When he looks at the reading table, he can clearly imagine a book, the only intelligible letters on its cover being the name Yeats.

Arthur.

He's never been allowed in Arthur's flat. The farthest he's ever gotten, in fact, was plastered against the door like sellotape, trying to talk Arthur into letting him in (he'd given up when the police responded to a complaint of a 'suspicious person on the premises').

Maybe he's actually in a coma right now, and his brain is playing around in Limbo again. In that case, it'll be Artie, not Arthur, in the kitchen. The difference might not have mattered at one point, but Eames is enough in his right mind that Artie _scares the shit out of him_ (beautiful dimples, condescending laughter, nasty little words like 'pathetic' and 'worthless' tripping out in tones of knife-edged derisive endearment).

Shades are the bogeymen of Limbo. Shades are the gods of dreaming. They know all the surest ways to hurt their dreamers. Thank God Eames' is locked safely in his own head (barring extreme lack of sleep)—Artie would break every bone in Ariadne's body if he got out (because Eames, try as he might, still gets moronic twinges of jealousy when she so much as stands too close to Arthur).

Eames wishes he had a weapon, or that it didn't feel like his head was going to tip off his shoulders if he walked too fast. But he doesn't. And it does.

It's a botched little kitchen-dining mash-up, work surface extending into a breakfast bar with three stools. Over it, Eames can see the fridge. At eye-level, boring steel-backed magnets pin down what looks like a colour-pencil drawing of a spotted guinea pig (or the world's fattest mouse).

When he finally arrives at the kitchen, he sees Artie flipping griddlecakes with one hand, a beaker of coffee in the other, a fag perched between his lips. Glasses, mussed hair, pyjamas (checked bottoms and an Army shirt, that's new)…all he's missing is—

In an instant, the beaker is on the counter and the glock beside it is spun to point at Eames.

—oh, there it is.

Eames doesn't know what to say. What do you say to someone who could be your closest co-worker (friend? love interest? partner in crime?) or a sadistic projection of your own subconscious? _Hullo, Arthur—are you by any chance feeling a smidge psychotic?_

Artie grunts and trades the gun for the coffee again. In a wonderful, awful, completely hilarious moment of practised dexterity, he swivels the cigarette to one corner of his mouth and sips his coffee without having to put it down. "You," he says with no trace of Artie's usual sneering superiority, "look like _shit_, Mr. Eames."

"I'm—sorry, am I dreaming?" Eames slurs. "Only if I am, you're not my usual Arthur—not the usual one if I'm not, come to that, and I don't think I've ever been allowed in your flat, and I'm mostly sure this is actually my shirt. How did I get here?"

Another grunt. Continuing the bizarre feats of dexterity, Arthur flips the griddlecake onto a stack of finished ones, butters it while the pan heats again, and pours the next, all while drinking his coffee and smoking.

"This, I think, I'm pretty sure, is _the_ strangest dream I have _ever_ had," Eames ventures timorously.

Arthur finally takes the cigarette from his mouth to tap ashes into a lacquered ashtray. "You are _not_ dreaming, Eames. If you'd like to check, Saito's fancy doctors put the contents of your pockets into a bag—I left it on the coffee table. That assumes you were bright enough to have your totem on you when those Blue Sun enforcers gunned you down."

Eames rucks up his shirt to look at the bandaging. "Huh. Gunned down. That makes sense."

Arthur breathes out a smoky sigh of exasperation through his nose. "If it weren't for the timely arrival of a tiny angry forger with steel-toed boots, you'd be dead."

"I'm sure I don't remember any of that," Eames says.

"Because, for another four hours, you will have very nice drugs pumping through your veins, courtesy of Yusuf."

Oh. Well done, Yusuf.

"But so then why…" Eames tries, and has to pause to string together a coherent sentence. "Why am I in your flat and you're cooking me breakfast?"

"I thought we sorted this out when Yusuf completely fucked the ratios on the demilitarizing agent and sent your brain floating into blissful overheat," Arthur says, flipping the griddlecake and returning to his coffee.

Eames can't work his way through that, not with whatever happy painkiller Yusuf has been kind enough to give him. "I'm," he tries, and rubs at his cheek. "That. What? Arthur, I have no idea what you've just said."

Arthur jabs a finger at Eames, then at the linoleum right next to himself.

Obediently, Eames shuffles closer (might as well, right?).

The current griddlecake joins the stack; the cigarette is stubbed out in the ashtray.

When Eames arrives at the spot indicated, Arthur leans over and kisses him briefly (Arthur smells like toothpaste and coffee and bloody _Pall Malls_). If Eames' brain were at all in working order to begin with, it would probably stop at this point.

"You are an idiot," Arthur says, pouring the last of the batter. "And I love you. And you were supposed to be on your way to meet me for dinner when those Chinese gorillas cornered you. It was going to be our first date. We are officially _cursed_ as a couple. What do you take on your pancakes? I have Vermont maple, a couple kinds of preserves my sister sent at Christmas…raspberry and blueberry, maybe some grape…and I think I've still got a jar of Nutella, but I wouldn't swear to its freshness."

Eames rubs his eyes. "Darling, you make my head hurt," he complains. "And if you take waffle batter and fry it in a pan, it's a griddlecake, not a pancake. Bloody Americans…"

"Go check your totem before you do something stupider than usual," Arthur recommends.

"Preserves, please—raspberry," Eames sighs, and turns to work his way back to the sitting room.

"_Love_ the way you say 'raspberry,'" he hears Arthur mutter.

He spills out the contents of the sack on the coffee table (they make varied clunking sounds against the glass), and stares at it all. The brilliance of Eames' totems is that most people wouldn't suspect them of being totems. Among the detritus of his pockets, a few items stand out. A little sculpted polymer keychain Tak made him (a sleeping cat). A bullet (.357). The counterfeit poker chip from Mombasa. An engraved lighter. Three photographs in his wallet (Miles smiling, Miles playing with James and Phillipa at the beach, Eames at his Eton graduation with his mother and her scruffy protégé).

What doesn't stand out is the little folded sheaf of receipts with girls' names and phone numbers. What doesn't stand out is the indentation of something having been sketched on a page above. What doesn't stand out is the ghost of a Penrose staircase, on paper that smells of Beam Black and Dior.

Every line is perfect. The exact depth, matching Arthur's pen-strokes. The exact orientation, crossing fading soy-ink informing him of the tab the team ran up that night because Ariadne kept ordering daiquiris and Tak drank top-shelf Scotch (tiny little thing like her!).

Eames groans and shoves it all back in the bag.

He really has been shot (and rescued by an adorable little ninety pound Japanese tomboy, which is unutterably embarrassing). In four hours or less, he is going to feel it (unless Arthur's hiding morphine somewhere), and it is not going to be nice. He really has missed his first date with Arthur (boo). He really is apparently being nursed back to health at Arthur's flat (hurrah). He really is…

…going to milk this for all he can get, he decides, getting back up (carefully) and making for the kitchen again.

"I'm dying to know the story of the rodent on your icebox, my dear."

Arthur makes an irritable noise. "My sister let her pet-killing child have a guinea pig. He's been named _Arthur_, like three of four hamsters and five of seven goldfish. I swear she's working up to some kind of voodoo ritual, letting him name all those short-lived creatures after me."

"After breakfast, can we sit on the couch and cuddle while you tell me all about it, darling?"

Another grunt. "Fine."

"And then rub my feet?"

"…I suppose."

"And then a sponge bath?"

A dishcloth whips over the breakfast bar and smacks Eames unerringly in the face.

**.End.**


	10. Exorcism Is Effortless

a silly little snippet of Arthur in Limbo. completely context-free, except for being set after Eames was stuck in Limbo during the demilitarization experiment.

**warnings:** post-movie (slightly AU?). taking liberties with how the characters met/how long they've known each other. OCs: Shelley (Arthur's sister), Isaac (Arthur's ten-ish nephew), Tak Shibuya (Saito's niece). minor blink-and-you'll-miss-it crossover. slight crack. language: pg-13 (for s***).

**pairing:** Arthur/Eames, background Dom/Mal.

**timeline:** several months post-movie; some as-yet-undetermined time after **Darling**.

**disclaimer:** Chris Nolan owns Inception and its characters.

**notes:** 1) title from the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. 2) it's common, in dreams, to be unable to read things that are written down, and for numbers to appear upside-down or backward. 3) Shelley and Isaac were first mentioned by name in **The Call**. Shelley was named after Mary Shelley (the chick who wrote _Frankenstein_), and she named her son Isaac after Isaac Asimov (the dude who wrote _I, Robot_). 4) the Wonderland watch was first described in **White Rabbit**, where we found out that Tak can't read it. Arthur only wears it with a waistcoat. 5) in case you've been hiding in a hole, or maybe you just managed to forget, Arthur's totem is a weighted red die. 6) this is not Arthur's first time in Limbo (he went in with Dom to get Eames shortly after **Darling** (**Papillon**), you'll see soon), but since he dropped in both times while sharing a dream with people who'd already been, he probably didn't have a need to build anything for himself, and instead found the perfect house that Dom and Mal built (or maybe he was taken there by projections).

* * *

><p><strong>Don't Panic<strong>

Arthur is reading a book that he can't read.

That is, he is looking at the pages, and turning them, and some part of him says 'ah, yes, what you're doing is called reading,' but he can't actually see the words. His eyes chase the letters around the page, but they're nonsense. Something is clearly wrong with the book. So he puts it down.

He's been sitting at the big oak table in Dom's dining room. On the porch (that seems to lead to nowhere), Tak is cutting Shelley's hair. They're chatting in a language Arthur doesn't understand, which is ridiculous, because his sister would've flunked high school French without his help. Behind them, in the distance, he can see skyscrapers and Big Ben and the Eiffel Tower.

"Where are the kids?" he asks, because Dom's house by definition contains Dom's children.

"Mal took them all to the zoo," Tak tells him. "Isaac wouldn't shut up about how 'cool' the alligators were, so James just had to see them."

"Oh," he says.

But Tak's never met Mal. Arthur can't remember why.

"When did you meet Mal?" he asks her.

Tak shrugs. "This morning. Have you seen the cat?"

The Cobbs don't have a cat. He says so.

"Not _their_ cat, _your_ cat."

Arthur doesn't have a cat, either. He's allergic. He frowns and gets up from the table to interrogate Tak further, and a men's pocket watch falls out of his lap.

On the watch's face, Alice sulks while the Mad Hatter orates. The Wonderland watch.

He stares at the watch for a while. Why would he have the Wonderland watch with him? He's wearing jeans and a tee ('Have You Seen My Force Lance?', a gift from Jake forever ago), and his Cartier's right there on his wrist.

"Why would I have…" he starts to say.

He picks it up, opens it. The hands are pointing to nine-oh-seven. He automatically corrects it to one-forty-five without knowing why.

"Tak, what time does this watch say?"

She rolls her eyes and says something to Shelley in that incomprehensible foreign language, puts down the scissors, and comes inside. "It says one-forty-five. Just like my phone." She demonstrates by picking her phone up from the table and showing it to him.

But that's wrong. Tak can't read the Wonderland watch.

Arthur drops the watch and closes his eyes and tries to remember how he got here. "I got here by…I took a cab from…from…_shit_."

Pocket.

His totem is where it should be. He centers his thumb on the one and feels the balance. It's too even. He throws it onto the table, but Shelley snatches it up before it stops tumbling.

"Arthur, you're being really weird. Have you been working too hard or something?"

"You're not my sister," he realizes.

Tak and Shelley share a look. "Who else would she be?" Tak asks. "I mean, she looks like your sister, doesn't she? And she sounds like your sister."

"You've never met my sister, and Mal's dead, and you can't read my watch. I'm dreaming. I don't dream anymore, but I'm dreaming." He runs his hands through his hair. "Shit. _Shit_, I'm in Limbo."

"That doesn't make any sense, Art," Shelley sighs, taking him by the shoulders and pushing him gently onto the window seat. "Just take a deep breath and calm down, and don't do anything drast—"

Arthur jumps when the side of her face explodes in a spray of red.

"Hey!" Tak says, just before taking a shot between the eyes.

"Sorry I'm late, took me ages to find the place," Eames says breathlessly, offering the hand that's not holding a gun. "Lucky for me, your version of Tak is quite far afield of the real thing."

"What happened?" Arthur demands. "How the hell did I end up in Limbo? Is this _your_ fault?"

"You wound me, love. It was very nearly entirely not my fault. In any case, I can just make it up to you later. Now come along, darling, we have a kick to make."

**.End.**


End file.
